


The Otherworld

by Noral_Covic



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV), Sevenwaters Trilogy - Juliet Marillier, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley
Genre: F/M, Genocide, Ireland, Irish Mythology - Freeform, The Celts, War, the history of Ireland
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-26
Updated: 2017-10-15
Packaged: 2019-01-05 17:51:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12194781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Noral_Covic/pseuds/Noral_Covic
Summary: Dechtire of Ulaid was born the daughter of the High King of Teamhair in the land of Eire, but her father was murdered, and his throne usurped. Her mother fled with her three children, and won a throne for her son Conchubhar in the province of Ulaid through marriage and cunning. Dechtire however, never wanted to be a queen, or to have a throne, and married for love. Nonetheless, one her wedding day a twist of fate left Dechtire fleeing Ulaid in the company of a man who was definately not her husband.He, Lugh, the Longhand, was the last Lord and King of the Sidhe.  To Dechtire, he was an outlaw, simply a leader of a cowardly raiding party. Irish myth would have it that a he turned her and her ladies in waiting into birds, and that they flew, but the truth is everyone at the wedding was drunk, and no one knew Dechtire and the other girls were even missing until well after midnight. Dechtire, whose story lasted a year and a day, is reduced to a few mere lines in another man's epic. This is the story of a woman who is only remembered for being the mother of Ireland's greatest hero, but was one of those rare beings who walked between worlds as they were fading.





	1. The Hand-fasting

**Author's Note:**

> This is totally my own story and my own characters (although Irish mythology owned them first). Forgive. Had to get it out of my head.
> 
> And this work is dedicated to my father, F. J. N. . 
> 
> He probably never thought I'd finish it, so here I am trying. Now, having recently passed away, he'll never get the chance to read it, but he'd like to have known his daughter became the kind of woman finished what she started. 
> 
> So I will do it this time, Daddy, God willing, and even if it is only ever published here online, at least I wrote it all down right? 
> 
> I feel, that's all he ever wanted me to do, and it would have been good enough for him. So, here's to a chapter every two weeks as a goal.

**CHAPTER 1---THE HANDFASTING**

The rafters of the thatched roof overhead dance back and forth in the orange shadows cast by the torchlight, as if they too are celebrating eagerly the coming day. The air within is mingled with the sudden warmth of a stifling and excited crowd, and the awkward sound of the bump of this girl into that, as one lass navigates between a post supporting the ceiling and the shoulder of a friend.

The torches are enthusiastically held aloft by a flock of colourful girls of fair and varied height. Some of them have at their throats, and in their ears, etched gold discs. Dressed in their brightest smocks, dyed red, purple, and yellow in checks or plaids, and wearing bracelets of thick braided coils of gold, the girls utter fierce hisses and whispers. They caution one another regarding the flames that play in their hands. 

Now, with the rising sun imminent behind the twin hills of Emain Macha, a young woman clamps shut her eye-lids, and orders her chest to rise and fall evenly---peacefully---as if she had not been staring at the roof beams all night. Feigning sleep surrounded by the crude light and excess heat thrown from the torches, this young maiden pretends to stir. She flutters falsely, first, her eyelids. She then smiles shyly at her torch-bearing attendants, as if embarrassed for them to have come upon her lying yet under linens.

In truth, this particular maiden has to restrain herself from leaping out of bed.

Although all fifty to be party to this parade of youth, wealth, and beauty can in no way fit into the room where our young woman has customarily slept four-and-ten years before the day now come, there are enough of them there crowded in, that well enough all can see without any of them setting fire to the women’s parlour in Emain Macha.

Emain Macha is the fortified stronghold of the kings of Ulaid, one of the five great Kingdoms of Eire. Of the five kingdoms, Ulaid is in the North East; Laigin in the South West; East Muman in the South East; West Muman in the Midlands to the coast; and Olnegmacht on the Eastern Coast, with a contested seat of High Kingship situated in Teamhair in Mid. Thus the reader may have guessed that the particular maiden hitherto alluded, is no common born creature. She is the Milesian Princess Dechtire, and the Milesians hold now most of Eire, which men will call Ireland in time, and much of lands that will one day be known as France and Spain.

Dechtire’s older brother, Conchubhar, is now the King of Ulaid, although many of the Milesian aristocracy would hold that he has a right to claim Mid and the High Kingship if he was ever fair disposed to.

Conchubhar’s disposition, however, currently runs away from open war, and towards raising the King’s seat in Ulaid to greater honour and prestige than the hill of Teamhair. Considering the halls of Emain to be equal or even superior to the halls of Teamhair, Conchubhar felt fervently that the occasions warranting celebration therein be equal or superior as well. And so it was that Conchubhar Mac Nessa, King of Ulaid decreed that whomsoever might wish to take up the journey to Emain Macha, the seat of his Kingship, then those who arrived in Emain Macha might partake in the festivities of his youngest sister’s wedding games, and stay for the days of riotous feasting that were sure to follow.

Thus the entire court of Emain Macha in Ulaid has come to be overrun and drunk, long before the event of the actual wedding ever takes place.

Craobh-Ruadh---the “House of the Red Branch”---, and  even the Speckled House, that great house and hall where Emain Macha’s warriors are regularly lodged, and their weapons kept, do not have enough floor to lay with rushes for all the heroes and fighters and champions who have come for a try at the hero’s portion of the wedding games. There is not a free room to be had within and around Emain Macha, and despite the status of nobility in attendance many are forced to sleep three to a bed. Alas for the common man, this has found him and his family searching for lodging with families nearby. Or, some have bravely pitched tents. And they are in luck, for the weather is finer than it is usually this time of year in the country.  

Since their father is not alive to do so, Conchubhar feels that hosting this uproar is his rightful duty to uphold, for, if their father were still living, Dechtire would be the daughter of the High King in Teamhair, not a minor princess in Ulaid. She would be wedding a great King, under great fanfare, not a warrior lad who had but done well to earn his place at a good King’s table.

...And even if they had another sister, who wished to wed a swineherd, well Dechtire knows his actions would be the same.

The Princess Dechtire is of keen enough mind to know that her brother means all this wealth and effort as no simple flattery to herself. Such a show of hospitality marks his strengths and powers to any rival Chieftain.

No King is in possession of more cattle, more bees for honey, has more salt on the table, and more warriors glinting with brighter gold torcs than those men gathered around his high table, than the so-called---for he is now a man full-grown ---‘ _boy-king_ ’ of Ulaid.

 _Be that a thing for the Usurper to mind,’_ Conchubhar gleefully imagines behind the coolest and most composed of brows as he waits in the pre-dawn darkness for his sister to arrive with her attendants, _‘that a minor Ulaid princess can afford to wed a warrior or a farmer as finely as the High King weds his brood to make them Queens._

Conchubhar is astride his finest chariot.

Beside him, is one of the High King Eochu’s daughters in a chariot of her own.

She wears a yellow smock dyed with saffron, and thick and many are the gold bracelets on her arms. It is a wonder that she can lift a hand to her lips under the weight, but she manages. Mugain of Teamhair stifles a yawn. She has also, a circlet of gold upon her brow. This denotes the diminutive young woman to be the Queen of Ulaid, and as such, she is known readily as Conchubhar’s wife.

While Conchubhar, entirely content with himself, waits within the vestibule of his chariot, Dechtire’s future husband, housed in a place of honour in the Speckled House, is roused by the heroes of Ulaid.

Sualtim, Son of Riog, of the plains and two rivers of Muirthemne, awakens to find himself being drowned.

Buckets of ice cold water slap his face, along with fools’ laughter.

The Groom-to-be jumps out of bed, swearing. Despite last night’s over indulgence in mead and merry-making, Sualtim emerges from his pre-dawn swim with eyes as keen as spear tips.

Sualtim makes to punch in the face, the first fool with a bucket that he can catch.

While Sualtim’s friends are making a mess of his clothes, the bride’s handmaidens are making a fuss over her dress. They have lain out the finely embroidered undergarments on Dechtire’s bed, and have scented them with scented waters. They have attempted to perfume the thick wool of the bride’s cloak, but they do not dare ruin the fine cloth and dyer’s art of her wedding dress.

The bride’s bed is finely carved, and is set in a place of honour upon a stone pavilion, near the back of the hall between two finely carved posts inlaid with twisted and intertwining knots of colored copper and bronze that support the beams of the ceiling. At times, for privacy, or for warmth, a wide curtain of simple linen lined with pressed wool felt is hung between the two posts, but this is not often done. The bed however, possesses a mattress of sewn linen sewn stuffed with clean goose feathers, and is covered by thick sheep skins, also clean, over which are thrown another set of sheets of linen. A blanket, also of linen, but lined with fur for warmth is readily available for the bed’s occupant, to keep out the chill of the women’s hall. Indeed, not every day in Emain Macha bears the excess of fifty torch-bearing handmaidens. 

A fire is kept most of the year towards the center of the hall. It is customarily extinguished but two days a year, for the hall is larger than most and difficult to heat. Buildings of this size are rare in Eire, but everything about Emain Macha is grand in scale now. Despite the awkward size and shape for Gaelic builders more accustomed to circular structures, the thatch of the vaulted ceiling keeps out most of the rain.

There is, of course, the flaw of the opening in the ceiling required for letting out smoke from the fire. Depending on the direction of the wind, it does tend towards keeping more smoke in than out. What rain that does enter from the opening in the roof however, seldom bothers the dwellings’ inhabitants. The fire itself is far from the feet of the beds or seats of the women. The wattled walls plastered with mud are remarkably fine for insulation and warmth, and the dirt floors, beaten with lime powder and strewn with fresh rushes, are surprisingly hygienic.

Today there is no rain, or unpleasant wind. The air is clear and fresh, but for the smoke of the torches.

Despite the warmth thrown from the torches and the heat thrown from the excess of so many bodies, the Ulaid Princess is grateful for the aid and eagerness of her handmaidens as they endeavor to groom and to dress her.

Even on the finest days, the morning air of Eire is chill and damp.

The weave of Dechtire’s wedding dress is thus wholly welcome to her goose-prickled skin.

The design of the dress however…

“I wish it were yellow,” Dechtire grumbles, “like Mugain’s.”

“Nonsense. Blue for a first wedding is tradition,” Dechtire’s mother Nessa chides in a forbidding tone.  

“I wore blue for my wedding,” Dechtire’s older sister Fiochem puts in, to Dechtire’s annoyance.

“And Mugain wore blue for her wedding to your brother,” Nessa waves her hand dismissively, and then presses a finger from the same hand to her lips as she purses them in annoyance. “Do not be difficult Dechtire. We have had this argument already. You always have to be the contrary one for attention.”

“I look well in yellow,” Dechtire asserts with affronted surety. “I am not so sure…of this.” She clutches the dress from the sides at the front in distaste and gives the fabric a fitful little shake. The dress is blue, the deep blue of twilight. Such is the colour of sky when the branches of the trees are black, and the moon has not yet hung its face, and only one star is yet on the horizon.  “It is a dress any woman could sew,” Dechtire complains, moving on to its lack of significant embellishment. “The embroidery is simple, even for my own hand.”

“It is elegant, my daughter. One day you will understand and thank me. There is an elegance in restraint that only someone truly wealthy can afford to show,” Nessa says.

“And up close,” Fiochem gushes, ever on their mother’s side, “it only serves to make the dye look more expensive.”

That was that. Simple it was.

“But will it stand out from a distance?” Fergus Mac Roi asks his wife departing the women’s hall, as Nessa and Fiochem continue to discuss Dechtire’s wedding-feast dress. Fergus Mac Roig awaits to attend his wife and stepdaughter to the Oathing-stone, helping each of these two beautiful women alight unto their wicker chariots. “Not every man sits within ready sight of the King’s table.”

“And what would you know of women’s dresses?” Nessa sneers as Fergus helps Fiochem up to her chariot.

 “I know Dechtire should not look or have any man think less of her, that she weds a warrior, not a Chieftain or King,” Fergus worries over his youngest stepdaughter, as he helps his wife clamber in.

Nessa gives her husband the most disdainful, withering glance over his helping hand. “She is my daughter, Fergus. Not yours. Certainly, I dressed her as befits the High King’s daughter. And that she chooses to marry beneath her...”

“...We all make our own beds. There we must lie.”

At such a rebuke, Fergus falls silent, and withdraws his hand.

But Nessa is not done, as she stands above him in the vestibule of her chariot. “No man can make another less by word or eye, but that a man believes himself lower before ever an eyes is cast down, or tongue hurled forth. Men make themselves less through believing they are less.”

“And women for accepting less?” the white-robed druid Cathbad in a gold-horned mask and crown of oak leaves enters the private conversation, leaning languidly on the frame of a simple wicker chariot he too will surmount, beside that of Fergus Mac Roi.

“We did not see you there,” Fergus grumbles.

“Greetings Mighty Fergus, Warrior, _friend_ ,” Cathbad drawls, his eyes never leaving those of Nessa, who haughtily endures his raping stare.

“For women, those two are usually one and the same,” Nessa comments dryly in the torchlight, and then motions for her charioteer to set off.  

This amuses Cathbad. The Arch-druid shakes his head in her wake. Then he turns to Fergus, truly interested.

“They tell me, that the ‘ _Little Bird_ ’ we wed today resembles our Ness.”

Fergus does not like any man to shorten the name of his wife, but Cathbad and Nessa have a history longer than the length of his marriage.

 “Aye...But before you ever put a hand to _my wife’s_ affairs, _Cath_ ,” Fergus all but snarls.

The lines of Cathbad’s unsettling smile deepen behind his mask.

Meanwhile  Dechtire childishly despairs a dress that she is certain, only serves to make her look sickly pale, and that casts shadows under her eyes where there should be none. _At least it will be hidden under the cloak for the most part_ , Dechtire insecurely reminds herself.

The woven-wool of the immense royal cloak the handmaidens struggle to fold and affix across princess Dechtire’s average frame is heavy, but comfortingly warm. Following, a polished bronze mirror is held aloft by a small girl with a large gold brooch for Dechtire to peer at herself.

It is hard for Dechtire to judge her appearance from the dim and poor reflection cast in bronze in the torchlight. Any face would appear strange and detached from that dark oval surface.

“You look beautiful,” the girls assure her, their voices like birds pecking at the rafters. “So pretty,” they coo and they caw. “You take after your mother.” ...And their tongues are like feathers that tickle her ears.

Dechtire knows the girls are thinking more of how they will look on their own wedding day, than of how she actually looks. 

To describe the Princess Dechtire, is to describe a creature not yet grown into her features, which are soft. Too soft, they seem perhaps dull or too plump upon first glance. That softness lends her a child-like prettiness rather than a grown woman’s beauty. She is charming perhaps, possibly will grow to be lovely one day if Fortune holds fair, but not pretty, never beautiful.

“I do not,” Dechtire intones. This of course, invites further compliments.

Which was half her intention, mayhaps.

But in her own head: _‘ am not a woman for whom Kings shall barter kingdoms over.’_ Yet the Princess pauses, wise enough to know that, while she might wish to be desirable for one man on this day, and that, to the end of her days, she has no wish to be a the great beauty bards tell tales of. _No tale of beauty ends but in sorrow,’_ Dechtire acknowledges with that sudden, dark, philosophical melancholy her race is prone to.

So the Princess, with volume, asserts: “I would rather be strong than beautiful. I would rather be known as ‘the girl who was brave’ than yet another maid that was pretty.”

Alas, her bones are as delicate as those of birds, and her height diminutive. She has been taught to embroider and sing and to dance, and to watch for the sake of giving noble advice to men who lead other men, events and expressions that pass, and words that are both said and unsaid. She has been taught to stand so that when others look at her, they feel proud, or strong, when they are weak, or hungry, or tired, or cold. She is meant to have a woman’s patience, but Dechtire has none.

For all that she has been taught to stand and wait, and to watch and be watched, her arms itch for action. Often her hands curl, and she imagines a spear shaft in them, and hurling such with all her might at an imaginary, wicked foe.

There are nights when she dreams of being the hero, and the blood sings in her veins with the force of a river at Winter’s final thaw, and she cannot sleep. For she feels there is something great still yet for her to do, a people for her to free or to save.

Of course, at the same time, she knows those are a child’s fancies.

Yet on those nights, Dechtire feels she is wasting here, born in the wrong lifetime, or to the wrong body.

 _Warriors do not have bones like birds,_ she often rues.

And for all that, Dechtire loves a feather bed and fine linens, and likes to embroider too well, and would like a simple home, and a husband, and children, and to be done with the politics of being from a great House. “You seem brave enough for a bride about to approach the Oathing-Stone,” one older girl wisely proclaims. “Every other girl I have ever attended the day of her wedding feast was a bundle of nerves....That is, if she liked the man she were about to wed. A sweaty mess and puffing breath, and here you sit, as calm composed as the first white snow. And we all know there is naught to dislike in the Roig lad you have chosen,” the older lass winks.

“Aye, I do love him,” Dechtire smiles shyly. She does not. Not yet. ...But she can she knows.

This is because Sualtim is the sort of young man that every man likes. More importantly, he is kind to the girls other men ignore, and even the girls that even other girls are cruel to.

...They had been in the Great Hall of King Conchubhar, Dechtire remembers. She had been filling cups along with her sister and the other girls under Conchubhar’s fosterage as hostesses. A hunting party had just come back and they had overcome, by chance, a small raiding party from Olnegmacht.

Already the men were telling tales of themselves, or commending a friend who had been at their backs, and had taken hard blows in their stead. Sualtim, Son of Roig was among them, and he was but a green lad still despite being fully-blooded, so he could take a place among the men, but all his close friends were still boys from the practice fields. And he was handsome.

Like all handsome young men, he seemed to know he _was_ handsome. And so Dechtire decided to dislike him, as she was wont to. He seemed to know that too, because he had asked her to dance.

Dechtire was still a girl-child then, but grown men who courted her brother’s favour, often paid such compliments to the women of Conchubhar’s house, and to amuse small Princesses, for it was known Dechtire did so love to dance. Such compliments were paid regularly to Princesses, Chieftains’ daughters, and the most beautiful of the young ladies and women seated or clapping along with the reels the musicians played in the area set aside in the hall for dancing.

“I am filling cups,” she had made her excuses, stubborn child that Dechtire, then, already was. “Perhaps you could ask another girl to dance. Certains, they would _love_ to dance with such a _hero_...who saved some cows. Mighty impressive to us mere maids, saving cows and sheep is,” the small Princess kept a straight face.

Sualtim could not, himself.

“Aye, I can see that it is, Princess. And who would you suggest?”

Dechtire set the large jug to her hip, for it was heavy, and she did not wish to stay long in conversation for this reason. The sooner the cups were filled, the lighter it would be, and when it was empty she could sit and quietly listen to what the Druids and Chieftains were discussing with her brother. 

“Why do you not ask Fionnualla, Amergin’s daughter? It seems that every other warrior here is, or is trying to.”

Sualtim considered this. “Would she not be tired of dancing then?” he asked, as if fishing for the compliment courtesy meant the little girl should lend him.

“Oh, I do not think even Fionnualla would be too tired to dance with you. She has been making eyes at you all night,” then Dechtire bowed to excuse herself, “which, by the way, you seem smart enough to know."

To Dechtire’s astonishment Sualtim had then gone up to the girls of Red–Spear, a warrior of renown, but of no major status or import beyond peoples’ respect for his deeds and his courage.

Red-Spear’s girls were pock-faced, and ugly, despite their shy smiles and kind eyes. These features had led the other children to cruelly call them “Cheese-face” and “Rat-wood”. All knew the sad story about the illness that had taken their mother, and scarred them. Old Red-Spear had never married again, and had raised the girls himself.

So of course, beyond being ill-recommended to their peers in terms of social status, wealth, and appearance, the girls did not know how to dress, or how to get along well with other girls. Coming of age had not helped them at all, for even the boys they had once been their play-mates then wanted naught to do with them, so they kept to each other’s company in Emain Macha when their father had forced them to come along with him.

Not even Dechtire knew them well. She, for one, had never been cruel to them, but neither had she invited their friendship.

Yet Sualtim danced with them both, one after the other. What compounded the oddity of this was that he seemed genuinely to enjoy their company.

This drew some snickers from his friends, the lads his own age.

“Going to marry Cheese-face? Or do you fancy Rat-wood?” they teased cruelly. “Or are you blind?”

“I am not looking to marry, just to dance,” Sualtim informed them casually, leaning against the wall with shields hung above his head. “Their father is a brave man, and they once kept a place at my father’s house, and we played as children." Sualtim smiled as Dechtire passed him, to which she rolled her eyes. And did you know, they told me where in Emain Macha I can find a Smith that charges less, but can do a spear tip as keen as Culan does? The same as does her father’s?” He winked. “Now I am going to get my cup filled.”

Sualtim left the other lads aged twelve-to-four-and-ten soundless with their mouths agape.

When he held forth his pewter cup meekly, Dechtire filled it.

“That was kind of you,” she offered as she did so. He was probably five-and-ten at the time; she was but ten years.

“And kind of you to say, Princess,” he had smiled. “I think you actually mean what you say, when you offer compliments limited to less than six syllables.”

Dechtire was taken aback. She had sputtered to speak but the taller lad cut her off, his green eyes bright and teasing, his face so beautiful as leaned towards her in the candle-light.

“And if you are going to call me kind for asking Cheese-face, and Rat-wood to dance, you should not. It was kind of them to do me the honour, even though we boys are so stupid and gross.”

“I...” Dechtire began. "You... You cannot ask them to dance, and then call them Cheese-face and Rat-wood behind their backs.”

“I do not,” Sualtim replied straight-faced, taking a sip from his mead-cup. “I think I am the only person in this room who says such to their faces.”

Dechtire was angry. “Girls call them that to their faces all the time, and it makes them cry.” _At least, they do when my mother is not watching_ , Dechtire remembers having thought then.

“Red-Spear’s daughters would never cry,” Sualtim had asserted with keen feeling. He seemed genuinely offended any one should accuse that great old hero’s off-spring of any blight of weakness.

“Well maybe you _are_ stupid then,” Dechtire had sighed, “because they do.”

"Well maybe you should try to be friends with them,” Sualtim raised his cup to take one last swig, and hammered it back. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and then he raised his empty cup to her. “And then other girls would never dare.”

“Not to their faces, anyways,” Dechtire had allowed him the right of that, albeit under her breath.

“Besides,” Sualtim had grinned at her before he went back to his friends. “I kind of get the feeling that Rat-Wood likes the idea of being a pest, and does not much care for what people think, even if her sister does. ...And I told Cheese-face that I like Cheese.” He winked, before he stepped away. “Her name is Saorise, by the way,” he called over his shoulder, mostly serious, “if you do not fancy being one of the folks that calls people names behind their backs.”   

And so Dechtire had fallen into like with Sulatim, son of Roig, long before she'd ever taken to liking boys. The recollection of his bravery assures Dechtire that she is making the right decision. It had come to pass that of all traits Dechtire abhors in the idea of a future husband, cowardice, hypocrisy, and weakness are the worst. She could never love a coward, a weak man, or a hypocrite.

 _What we despise most in others are the flaws we contain the most of,’_ Dechtire muses, lost in her own thoughts more in a crowd, than she ever is like to be when she alone by herself. Then she flushes, for she is not sure of what mettle she is made of, how far she can be stretched before she breaks. Even she knows it is foolish to wish for that knowing, it is there, in the part of her soul that fears being weak, of being ordinary.

_Being a married woman is such an ordinary thing to be._

Yet still, Dechtire has decided she wants, no, she deserves that kind of ordinary life. Her mother and father and stepfather and brother have all lived lives that folk tell tales of. She does not want to be just another story.

...“Yet there is no high colour in your cheek,” the older girl is still sighing. “I would be as red as elderberries if Sualtim, Son of Roig, were about to Feast me.”

...And Dechtire realizes she should be thinking about her future husband and her wedding day. _I_   _am such a selfish person, always thinking of myself,’_ Dechtire thinks.

So she focuses instead upon the details of the day.

“’Tis this dress,” Dechtire declares in excuse of her apparent lack of feeling. “It washes me to chalk. I look a dead fish in it.”

“Creatures of water do not have your fire, Princess. Water could not dampen it, nor any cast of dye.”

The torch-light casts unearthly shadows over Dechtire’s features, but surely, the blaze of her auburn hair is somewhat visible even in a hand mirror cast of bronze, as two girls make skilled work of it.

Dechtire touches the sides of her head in order to admire the finished efforts of her handmaidens.

She herself has never been able to style her impossibly curly, yet impossibly fine hair beyond the most of basic of braids or plaits. Even those tend to look wild and unkempt after an hour or so, because the Princess’s hair makes regular habit of escaping any contraption or position meant to keep it in place.

Others, obviously have greater skill in the art of hair dressing than she, for Dechtire feels, with pleasure, her hair to be rather unnaturally bound up to the sides of her head in coherent knots, anchored by large bronze latticed-marked beads.

It is difficult to make out in the murky surface of the mirror, but a delicate string of hawthorn flowers has been woven by deft hands amid and around the strands that have been allowed to flow free.

Dechtire touches the string of flowers quizzically.

“To keep the Fair Folk away from you,” one of the girls winks, to explain.

“Best it be made something iron o’er a thing o’ silver,” another teases, puffing the flowers in Dechtire’s hair. “Those beads, they are made o’ bronze, not iron.”

...For it is a well-known fact among Milesian girls that the Tuatha de Danaan, that people who inhabited Eire before the coming of the Gael, burn quick when iron touches their fair skin. It is also storied that hawthorn shrubs ward these strange malicious beings away, as well as the flowering tree’s shrubs hedges Gaelic cattle in.

The girls then giggle.

“Iron beads would look so ugly,” the girls agree.

“And I am sure Sualtim would take it the wrong way, if we bound a dagger up in there,” one of the girls winks. “That is all we need, is the men of Roig to take offence and some fool to get himself speared before I even get the chance to dance. No, Hawthorn will have to do.”

Dechtire is led out before sunrise with a fiery stream of torch-bearing handmaidens in chariots flowing afore her.

Her husband-to-be, in compare, stands waiting, long since arrived at the Oathing-stone. He is the dark and manly shadow there upon the quiet hill. Sualtim, son of Roig is right nervous, and for fair reason. King Conchubhar Mac Nessa, Nessa, Fergus Mac Roi, as well as many well-armed warriors attend, overshadowing the Ulaid lad’s much smaller party.  Should any take offence of the other side, or disagree at this point to the match (which would result in great offence being taken by either party) then things will not go well the Groom and his men.

Also, Cathbad, the great old druid himself, is reading the degrees of the Princess Dechtire’s marriage arrangement.

The legal rights of a woman of Dechtire’s status, wedding a man with a lower degree in status, such as Sualtim, are, in fact, many.

This makes Sualtim nervous. To keep his wife, he will have to work harder at marriage than most, because she has full right legally to leave for the slightest of excuses, and mayhaps there could well be some who will encourage her to do so, if he ever insults the wrong person.

This wedding is also not to the Druid Cathbad’s personal liking, a fact that he made well-known beforehand. He has more care of bloodlines than most men in their society. The House of Roig is a noble house, but it is not a princely one.

“Some say he foresaw another husband for the Princess,” one of Sualtim’s men whispers in explanation to the others, from a place where he thinks Sualtim will not overhear.

“Aye, and that ruin is come upon Ulaid, since Conchubhar’s wee sister weds other than a King,” another pipes up. “That Cathbad even argued with the King over it; the girl was always marked to be a Queen.”

“And what King was that exactly?”

“They say Cathbad did not know this King’s name.”

“Convenient.”

“Shut up you lot!” another hisses angrily.

Sualtim has a hunter’s ears. He sets his mouth into a cool line and looks on as if he does not care what folk whisper. He loves this girl and will not waver, even the world sees her atop the highest mountain, and he, but a pebble in her shoe.

So, as the druid is invoking blessings upon the union of the young couple with ancient words and gestures, his every grey-eyed glance seems to cast the prediction of being doomed upon it.

Dechtire and her young man smile at each other shyly—encouragingly—despite.

Under the shadow of the dauntingly white-robed and gold-horn-masked Cathbad, they agree to the terms and degrees of their marriage. Despite the intimidation the old Druid’s presence inflicts upon the bold young couple, they manage to clasp hands through the Oathing-stone, and swear to, “ _Honour, protect, and live with one another, and love as one might...”_ without much trepidation.

So saying, their hands are chorded and braided together, symbolic of the binding measures of their legal marriage agreement.

The gathered party then kindly gives the, suddenly-shy, Gaelic Princess and her handsome warrior husband a moment to speak to one another, before carrying them away towards the impending celebration, and the day’s ultimate exhaustion.

“So.... _Wife_ ,” Sualtim begins, then he looks away. He wants to rub the back of his neck nervously, but cannot. “Husband?” Dechtire pauses, staring at his feet. They both laugh nervously.

The young couple does not know what they should say to one another, and being bound as they are, they can do nothing other than joke and blush, and try to stare at one another without being the first to laugh or look away. For two people so bold as to always speak their minds, they find they have nothing fitting to say beyond that for the moment. Then Dechtire’s handmaidens arrive to unlace the couples’ hands. The girls take the strands and reweave the braided chord around two goblets. These are filled to the overflowing brim with honeyed mead, and all watch as the young couple struggle to sip simultaneously from the awkward doubled cup during the traditional toast, which King Conchubhar gives.

Dechtire’s lips briefly meet those of her new husband as she strives to drink from the cup without spilling its contents on her fine new clothes.

 This evokes hearty cheers from all included in the private party, except perhaps Cathbad, and Dechtire herself.

Both shiver in the moment, as if suddenly cold.

Already though, the sun has risen, and seems to promise it will not abandon the day to either rain or cloud.

The Princess Dechtire is then led off to the ladies’ bench on the field where the last day of her wedding games are to be held, and here she is fed a brief breakfast. On the hill behind, as the sun rises, there appears to be camped and waking, the whole of Ulaid.


	2. THE WEDDING GAMES

**CHAPTER TWO---THE WEDDING GAMES**

An affluent Gaelic tribe often celebrates a wedding by hosting what are commonly known as wedding games. These are times for people to exhibit unrestrained enjoyment without the usual unpleasantness that is wont to occur on these occasions among persons peering from such a hot-blooded race. Rules are lain down to govern such public assemblies, that no one, at the risk of his life, durst pick a quarrel or strike one another, beyond the pitch of the games.

Beyond the usual athletic games, exercises and races of the pitch, there is dancing, eating, drinking, music, recitations by skilled poets and story-tellers, jugglers’ and showmen’s tricks and plays, and oftentimes more than one marriage, and announcement of giving away in marriage.

The wedding games as they had consisted thus far had opened on the first day with contests in dancing and singing, and had ended with a contest in poetry recital.

The second day had begun with the lads ten-to-twelve beating at their bronze hurling ball and the prize for the winning team being awarded by King Conchubhar himself, and then the older lads trying to best each other in distance and accuracy with arrow slings.

The third day had been the football matches. In the morning the girls played the more ancient version of the game, each lass having her hands bound behind her back, but still with a leather-bound ball to kick. The goal for points awarded being holes dug on either side of the pitch, rather than raised posts, and the aim was to kick the ball into one of the holes. The matches for the boys were carried on later in the afternoon.

The game is considered more a child’s sport, although contact in the form of kicks and elbow jabs are allowed without penalty.

Women are made welcome in all manner of sport in Celtic society. However, a lass with a preference for spear-work, hurley, charioteering, or sword-work does not commonly feature unless she is particularly adept at those arts, and nigh fearless of bodily harm.

If so, well then, she becomes a legend.

Dechtire wishes she had the physical strength to be one of the warrior women from tales, as there are none now at Conchubhar’s court, but alas, she has never been able to hold her own against even women in wrestling bouts, let alone imagine herself able to overpower a full-blooded Celtic warrior at swords or shields.

The last morning of Dechtire’s wedding games consists of what tournaments can be had from spear-throwing and sword work, with chariot racing to be conducted later on in the afternoon.

The sword and spear bouts are what the real warriors have been waiting for, for in their conclusion lies the fame of the hero’s portion. Although the bouts were more of a dance than a real fight, the wounds were real, and occasionally fatal. A good whack in the head with a heavy object bruises and blisters and may crack a skull flat open with the right force, and a dull blade can still cut if there’s strength behind a blow. Broken fingers and busted noses are the order of the day.

One fine boy this morning already, not yet twenty-one, makes such a show of throwing and catching his sword---to show how slow his opponent is---but the sun blinds him in one careless moment when his sword is yet in the air, and he near clean slices off his own thumb.

The boy, Gael that he is, and that, of Ulaid, fights on of course, bleeding everywhere---this time quickly---and wins---for his opponent is a pigeon to a hawk of a fighter.

All cheer.

This is Emain Macha, the House of the Red Branch warriors. These are the people red with blood ready to be spilt, red with quarrels in their eyes, ready with hands and arms for the blood of their enemies.

Dechtire bears her gaze straight ahead, even she sees a lad whose eye is sorely gauged by the hilt of a practice sword.

Rough games are these, for this is a warrior’s place, and Dechtire grew up surrounded by heroes and battle veterans, and many a young lad whose cup she had filled, and whose swollen eyes she once swabbed, with cuts and wounds from games and practice fields she once tended, that never came home.

It makes one a little cold. However, the cheer of the men is raised, and it burns her ears. Dechtire finds she cannot not cheer the older fighter’s better sword knowledge, or the young lad’s audacity for taking him on.  _Now I am a married woman with a warrior for a husband._ The thought comes upon her suddenly, and she feels a change in her blood. What an unmarried girl finds daring or dashing or brave, a mother, a married woman or a woman in love may find stupid, careless, or without use or purpose.

Sualtim, her husband, is not wearing his finest clothes yet, although he is wearing a cloak of five-folds as well, with a massive brooch of gold in the new style, and a lot of other gold besides. This afternoon, for the wedding games, he is expected to participate, so his weapons lay close by his seat. When Dechtire’s gaze falls upon him, his eyes are enrapt upon the sport on the field.

The men of Ulaid are as full of pride and vain-glory, as a man from a lesser place than Ulaid would be with self-preservation and determination who must fight to save his life. In Ulaid this is done merely to catch a prize or to save a face.

And so the fighting has been fierce, and many number the foolish, who have pitted themselves against a man more mighty than he in strength or skill at arms or games of war.

As the bride, Dechtire smiles freely whenever Sualtim is called up to fight, for his is the only brow that is to be spared.

 _At least for today,_ she counts small blessings.

It is the tradition of the Milesians for the Groom to fight the warriors of the Bride’s house for the hand of the bride, and as is tradition, as Dechtire’s brother had already allowed and given his congratulations that the marriage should go on, his warriors pretend to fight his sister’s new husband and allow themselves to be defeated, careful not to mar the groom and making every effort to leave his body hale and whole (and handsome) through-out the course of the day.

Of course, had her brother not allowed the marriage, even had Dechtire wished it, this show would be for life and limb, and real.

“Would it not be romantic for a man to really have to win the games, to win his bride?” one silly girl sighs, echoing the thoughts of Dechtire.

“ _These_ games?!” an older girl scoffs. “With all the Red Branch to go through first? Are you mad?!”

“He would have to be so brave, and so skilled,” the little one continues.

“He would be dead,” the older one finishes, acutely. “No man would be idiot enough to attempt it.”

“At least not for my hand,” Dechtire interjects, amused.

The girls smile graciously.

But now Sualtim is called out to fight by Dechtire’s step-father, Fergus Mac Riog, who is her brother’s champion besides her mother’s current husband.

There is an intake of breath from the crowd.

This challenge is wholly unexpected, and from the looks on the faces of the bridal pair, unscripted.

Fergus is a very sentimental old Gael even if Dechtire alone knows it.

Despite being the most feared fighter in all the land of Eire, and a giant bear of a man besides, Fergas Mac Roig has been as a father to Dechtire. He, of all people, would never allow his favourite foster-daughter and step-child to go to man who could not well defend her.

As Fergus up and strides to the field, he gives Dechtire a wink from behind his shield arm, where she alone can see it. Otherwise, she would probably bolt from the seat she is frozen upon.

When he reaches the field, Fergus Mac Roig turns to the direction of Sualtim, and then to the gathered crowd, and to all those who are within hearing distance he hails: “This lad is no friend to myself on this day!” Then he beats his shield with his sword arm fiercely three times.

Dechtire cringes from the wicked sound.

There should be those who now boo and crow at him, for on this day not even the King’s champion is supposed to have victory over the groom, but none dare, for this is Fergus Mac Riog. He is a man who will remember and pay back the debt of an insult.

Dechtire takes a big swig of mead, and looks to Conchubhar to see if he will say some words to deter the match.

But her brother says and does nothing but smiles behind his hands, which are folded before his face so his chin can rest on them.

Sualtim shrugs off his cloak as he rises from his chair, and theatrically undoes all the gold he is wearing.

“In case anything should happen to me,” he shouts to the ecstatic crowd, and then winks at Dechtire, his green eyes, under russet-lids of a double-row of lashes, beguiling. “To provide for my widow!” he remarks in volume for the benefit of Ulaid, and hands it all to Dechtire for safe-keeping.

“I came here to take my bride, not to make friends!” Sualtim yells to some amusement, and now there are some bold enough to cheer him on, even against the champion of Conchubhar Mac Nessa.

And with a quick chaste kiss on the cheek, he bids his bride wish him luck with a lop-sided grin. Sualtim takes up his shield and marches dutifully out towards Fergus on the field. Sualtim feigns as if he is bored and tired with all the events of the day, even the prospect of his own death.

Then they begin and the fight is quick.

Fergus bludgeons Sualtim’s shield arm until the shield goes flying and strikes a surprised Sualtim across the side of the head with the edge of his shield.

A large red welt forms there, and Sualtim’s eyes narrow, and he adjusts his stance, and from that point on, he moves as a man in battle for his life against a stronger opponent must move.

Dechtire drinks from her cup without pause, and winces at the force of the strikes which Sualtim manages to repel. She feels her own arm ringing with each blow, as if it is her marrow shaken to jelly in the core of her bones, not her young husband’s. Sualtim is not fighting, but merely taking a beating it seems, for Fergus was the sword-master for all of Conchubhar’s warriors, and knows Sualtim’s tricks, all.

Fergus is the stronger fighter, taller, with all of the reach, and Sualtim has not the advantage of one facing a foe he has not already fought before.

Fergus knows him, like a father knows a son, and the end is nigh, the crowd supposes, from an intake of breath.

Then Sualtim is up, and catches the corner of Fergus’ sword with the shaft of his own hilt, and gives it a deft twist, which causes the blades to lock and catch…

…And it flies free!

Dechtire finds herself, breath caught in her throat, very angry all of a sudden.

...For besides Fergus and Sualtim patting each other on the back after it is all over, and walking back towards their formal places after Fergus’ feigned collapse for mercy under Sualtim’s blade… Dechtire knows that was a risky move!

Dechtire has been raised watching the practice fields of Emain Macha from her ramparts. She knows a risky move when she sees one. For, in that action the hilt could catch and slip either way, and even the blades are dull, could have sliced open the hand of her new husband.

Dechtire glares at Fergus, and she glares at Sualtim, who sheepishly rubs the new welt on his head that is slowly causing his right eye to swell shut.

“Now tell me, my ‘champions’,” Dechtire bites her inner cheek to keep her ire in check as the two fools approach her bench. “What is the point of wedding clothes, and gold, and the bride doing this or that to make herself fine, if her idiot husband ruins all the effort, and cannot even see her?!”

“I think a man is handsomer for his battle wounds, than to have none to show,” her stepfather gamely puts forward. And then he kisses Sualtim’s brow, for the lad is as a son to him now, by marriage to Dechtire, for Dechtire is as a daughter to him. He has no natural daughters of his own.

Sualtim theatrically winces to some laughs, but Dechtire is sure it does rightly throb to the touch.

And when her mother’s husband goes to kiss her brow, this Dechtire allows, although, were others not watching, she would kick him at his shins, that one place where she knows the bone is weak.

But when Sualtim comes towards her Dechtire, she stiffens in form, and although he is an idiot, he is a wise-enough a man to know the cause of her enmity, and smiles sweetly at her with a “sorry of the eyes”.

So, she dresses her ‘victor’ of a husband awkwardly back in his gold and his cloak. But as she does so she whispers in his ear in ire: “So you wanted to spend our wedding night in surgery, did you?!” When he replies naught to that, beyond looking sheep-faced, she threatens, “That, I can still arrange if you should like.”

Despite having the knowledge that his angry little bride is plotting some sort of maiming revenge, Sualtim is still grinning like an idiot when Fergus leads him back to his bench. There, he gulps back some much-needed water. He splashes some over his head, and shakes his hair out as if naught were amiss.

Dechtire glares at him all the while, emptying her cup of honey-wine, and getting quickly drunk. Later, she finds herself floating, aloft from the day, like a bird watching all the events from above and beyond them.

The Hero’s portion of the feast has been awarded; the noon sun is at its zenith, and sweat now trickles down Dechtire’s back under her heavy new bridal cloak while she sits to watch her brother’s favourite sport: the races. But where the mead once had a pleasant spice to it, now it is turning her belly to a sickening sweet, and the Princess is most definitely drunk and sure to be sick.

The wheels of chariots churn the turf in a manner most deadly. Dechtire feels as if her intestines are being churned by the wicker carts as they reel past and around the track. She curls her fingers and stares at them, for there is a certain delay to the touch and the sense.

There is a humming in her veins, and a back-and-forth rocking motion to her head, and it is not the wild music being played on the field behind, nor the cheers of the crowd lining the track for these horses or that charioteer. She does her best to hold on to their words and their songs, but Dechtire feels her cheeks flush with heat, and her attention slipping. 

 _It is like I am being dragged to a Sidhe-story world,_ the tipsy Bride thinks ruefully.

To the handmaid who is her favorite friend among the maidens of Ulaid, she whispers, “Brid, I think that I am drunk.”

“You are quieter than usual,” a tall, slim girl named Brid quips with a keen smirk.

“Shut your face!” Dechtire wobbles. “It is my revenge. If my husband can get a black eye than I can get drunk.”

“Certains, ‘tis just. Make sure to puke all over him to let him know it,” Brid rolls her eyes, her sympathies more for the contestants on the field.

“Ugh,” Dechtire groans. “There are still....a few... _oh_....hours yet....before we must...seat ourselves in....the Hall?”

“Aye,” Brid turns to her friend. “And what do you mean to do before then?”

“I want to lie down,” Dechtire whimpers pathetically. 

“And I want to see my brothers horses place,” Brid grumbles. “I think our new charioteer will actually beat your brother’s.”

“Not likely,” Dechtire closes her eyes, and rubs her temples. She really has to go, she decides.

So Dechtire makes to rise. Before she does all the way, she bends to Brid’s shoulder. “I have well...and enough...time...to sober up if we are waiting on that.”

So Brid looks up at her friend.

Then both girls wave over Dechtire’s older sister, the Princess Fiochem.

“Horse and chariots have always...bored...the life out of her,” Dechtire laughs wanly, at their ability to readily attract Fiochem’s attention. Both girls grin despite Dechtire’s squeamish state.

Fiochem smells Dechtire’s breath the second she reaches the side of her sister. The tall, fair Princess in a dress the colour of wine and rich with threads of gold looks down at her little sister through her nose.

“Dechtire, you are not really a woman of Ulaid, are you?” she chides. Nonetheless, Fiochem acts as a runner and delivers their message to Conchubhar and the Groom.

Of course, Fiochem has to put in, the reason behind the message.

Conchubhar hides a laugh but nods approvingly that Dechtire should enjoy herself and rest, and so she makes to go.

To her fifty maidens of Ulaid, Dechtire does wanly address:

“Do you mind if we put off from the field and put off my dress? I am feeling a little tired and would like to lie down.”

This she asks the girls, and although some of them sorely---and rightly---hate her for it.

Their eyes are a spell of fickle dislike.

 _No matter,_ Dechtire lifts her chin like a Queen. _I have no intention of the rest of the evening being blur for their sake. It is my wedding._

As is their duty, the girls follow the Bride out.

“Sualtim and some others likely think it right modest of you, Dechtire, to nap,” Brid teases.

“Shut your face,” Dechtire groans.

“Some women do, on their Feast Day,” Brid continues, mostly talking to herself. “Bet some men wish they could to, but then they would never hear the end of it, if they could not drink all day and through the Feast, and still stay up all night with their new wife. One of your brother’s foster-daughters, a cup-bearer, tells me that your husband is watering his wine.”

“Can we hear an end to _your_ talk _please_?” Dechtire all but growls.

Brid grins. “’Tis your fault. Every one of us wanted to watch the races, but you. Who cannot have it said of her, that she cannot hold her liquor.”

“You and I both know I can drink more than any of my brother’s warriors,” Dechtire laughs, as the world spins.

“Aye,” Brid says sagely. “Key to keeping you famous for that is whisking you away from the contest, before any can see what becomes of you for the winning.”

“Aye,” Dechtire’s stomach lurches, and she wills her feet to carry her straight and steady.

So it is that Dechtire seeks out the sunniest parlour house on Emain’s central lawn to lie down. To be comfortable, Brid and the others help her remove her cloak and her clothes, but for her linens.

About fifty girls are beside her, though she cannot count them. They seem to dance, as she is dizzy with mead. She clutches at soft, scented linens, and closes her eyes. She snuggles into a cosy hide of sheepskin, and bids the world be still behind her lids.

The other girls, far too excited about the events of the day, sit and gossip, or tell stories.

Turns out that Rat-wood, still a maid and unmarried, is a good story-teller.  No one speaks of her unkindly when she spins words like threads, and embroiders with such skill, the tapestries that are hung in the halls of their heads.

The girl is telling stories about the King of the Formorians, and the Tuatha de Danaan, those peoples who inhabited Eire before the coming of the Gael. Rat-wood tells a tale about a game of hurling played by the Sidhe---the Danaans---with the heads of the King of the Fomorians, and his sons:

“Instead of the metal bronze ball we Milesian Gaels are familiar with, they played with heads of their slain, sworn enemies,” Rat-wood plies the horror. “And with the head of the King of the Fomor, Balor, and the heads of his sons, the Danaans played until every stick of their men was properly bloodied, and the skulls cracked to pieces.

“And so the wish of King Balor, ‘ _that on green fields again his sons would play when the war with the Sidhe was over_ ’, came to be granted.

“So it is that any mortal should have a mind when a Lord or Queen the Tuatha de Danaan offers him or her their choice in dreams... For the Sidhe always give thee whatever thou’s heart durst most desire. But done in a dreadful way, that you will rue one day, surely, the asking, the wishing, the wanting, of it, ever.”

Dechtire falls asleep to such red tales.

Then she dreams, and when she awakens, it is as if she were dreaming still.


	3. A MAYFLY IN THE MEAD CUP

**CHAPTER THREE---A MAYFLY IN THE MEAD CUP**

Dechtire is dreaming. She dreams that she is drinking still, and that a fly has fallen into her cup, and that she swallows it.

While Dechtire is lost to her dreams, Saorise, daughter of Red-Spear (who is called by some ‘Cheese-face’) fingers the fine blue gown wistfully. Although her years are closer in count to those of the groom than the other maidens in the parlour, Saorise is still a maid unwed. It seems unlikely to Red-Spear’s oldest daughter that she shall ever celebrate a wedding of her own, or have children to care of her when she is old. Fervently she wishes to the gods that she worships, that she will have a chance to wear a bride’s dress at least once in her life before death calls out her name. Saorise wishes, more than anything, for a handsome man to gather her up on his arms, and tell her that her eyes look fair in blue.

So as Red-Spear’s eldest plays with dresses and royal robes, most other girls remove their outer garments for it is a warm day at the height of noon.

Then the large latticed screen to the women’s parlour of Emain comes clattering down.

Dechtire sits up. Although the Princess is still drunk, for a moment, she feels quite sober.

The image of a bright and shining man accosts her vision.

“Dechtire, sister of Conchubhar Mac Nessa!” the man’s voice rings out harshly. The words are in Gaelic, _yes_ , but the accent of the speaker is stranger, older than the Gaelic race or realm in Eire.

Dechtire blinks. Then she decides that she must be dreaming still, for towering over her is a man more fearsome and awesome than any she ever beheld before that hour. He is armed with a red-tipped spear and carries no shield. He holds a short-sword polished bright as a flame before him...And that one sees before there is any power in one to see aught else.

Dechtire blinks harder, and rubs her eyes several times, bidding her sight to clear. _Pass on dream...Or nightmare. Whatever thou art, be gone,_ she thinks, batting the felt of her lids.

Then Dechtire sees his eyes, his bones, his shadow’s length across her.

 _His eyes are a frozen river,_ she thinks, _the colour of them the pale blue of ice that is too thin to cross_. Suddenly she knows: _All the rest of him is fire_.

He meets her eyes for the shortest of seconds, and then her breath freezes in the sack of her lungs. His eyes seem to smirk at her evident disbelief in his person, although the line of his mouth never changes, as if it is carved in stone. Then his gaze passes on.

Dechtire shudders.

There is mead in her veins stills, and sleep over her eyes. Even that, Dechtire knows: _This man is something wicked._

Drunk, passed-out, and woken from a sleep-like-death, and Dechtire would still know that this man is of the Sidhe people, the Tuatha de, a Fey Danaan. His hair is golden, straight, and shoulder-length, and his beard is short in length and just as golden.

For the longest of moments Dechtire makes out none of the other armed figures in the room. She sees only his figure, his long shadow cutting across her body, and Dechtire hears naught but his voice asking for her person to come forward, and the beating of her own heart within her chest.

She would answer to her own name, but no words come....As somewhere in back of her head it has already befallen her brain (which is keener than her tongue) that none of her brothers’ men should hear them now, were they all of them there to scream.  _All are busy and drunk and far on the fields, and loud are the drums and the beating of hooves, and ere is it long before sunset still_ Dechtire despairs.

Dechtire is not the only maid to think thus, and not the first to wonder what purpose men such as these could have for the King’s sister, or the maidens of Ulaid. She is not the first to realize that there are no men of Ulaid yet to miss them.

Everyone was drunk, and at games, and none would notice a small disguised group of revelers pass, nor take care of their going. Despite:  

“I am a daughter of the Red Branch,” one lass stands up, and makes her way forward gravely.

There is silence in the hall, as all heads to turn to face the speaker.

It takes a manner of boldness to borrow the wedding dress belonging to a bride on her wedding day. It takes something more than mere boldness, for the tall, slender girl to step forward under their wicked gazes, dressed all in trailing blue.

“As ugly as the mother and brother seem fair,” quips one of the Sidhe raiding party, perceiving the bride. He speaks in Gaelic, so she is sure to hear to him.

“No wonder they could not find a King to take her,” another of these wicked men say.

The other men have more arms on them, or have a more hateful air to them, but the first man Dechtire saw, with the cold, frozen eyes, and the fire flowing through him, is the most frightening of them all by far.

Saorise boldly faces the armed intruder wearing the finest cloak of any maiden frightfully huddled there in the women’s parlour, cowed in stony silence. While wearing Dechtire’s wedding dress, she answers back petulantly: “And who are you, and what would you have of the sister of the King?!”

 _Sualtim was right!_ thinks Dechtire.   _The girl might fear never marrying, not being asked to dance, and mayhaps she cries over nick-names, but she does not flinch from spear-tips!_

The man who asked for Dechtire steps towards Cheese-face, past Dechtire a ways. "I am Lugh the Longhand of the Tuatha de Danaan!” the terrible man with the great spear informs the brave young woman standing before him, "and it is with me you must come away now, and your houseguests here along with you." Reaching Saorise he draws his sword against her cheek.

 She does not flinch.

 _Do it_ , she is thinking. _Cut it off, my flesh, and see the woman that I am underneath. See what a woman of Ulaid is made of!_

He taps her cheek with the sword three times. "Unless of course that is, you would prefer we make your wedding hall a royal tomb."

Saorise’s scars become taut white stripes as her cheeks broil an angry red. Their high colour is not the flush of fear.  She speaks: "If we, the daughters of Ulaid, go with you,” she says, “Know now, Lugh... the Longhand, our kinsmen will soon rescue us, and see you dead, and you will rue this day."

 Her speech draws snickers from the other armed men in the room.

"Come then, daughter of Ulster," the great man with the spear says gently, as if he admires her for her boldness, and withdraws his sword from her cheek.

But then, these great tall, shining, wicked men start to argue among themselves in their fey tongue.

Betimes, they switch to Gaelic, but only the parts of their speech that they wish the girls to understand.

 _This_ , Dechtire judges from the parts she is allowed to understand, _is done in order to frighten us...or, reassure us_?

Of what is said in Gaelic, she hears:“We should decorate _this hall_ with _their_ heads!” a great big red-headed man, all coils of muscle, and eyes full of hate, spits. He is eyeing the women in the room as if all are less than animals.

“We are not like them!” shakes the head of the beautiful, wicked man with the red spear, who calls himself Lugh the Longhand. “We do not murder little girls! Would you be worse than they, and decorate with skulls of children?! No, I will not have my men kill like cowards. I do not kill girls.”

“What about this one?” the big hateful Danaan grabs proud Saorise by the skirt of Dechtire’s fair blue bridal gown. “Did not their own druid proclaim her,” he looks brave Saorise in the eye, “as he did _the Bitter-woman_ for the _Boy-King_ , that she is destined to be ‘ _the mother of the hero who will be savior of her House and race_ ’?” He looks to the Longhand. “I’ll not leave here with her still breathing. Would you have worse than Conchubhar? If you could go back in time, would you stay my hand if I were to kill his mother before she could ever bear him?”

There is a deep indrawn breath from the girls in the room, and many stupidly look to Dechtire. Red-Spear’s daughter, however, gives nothing away.

The Longhand’s face remains impassive. He says some more cool words in their faerie tongue, and the other Sidhe men seem then to agree with him. To the big man he says, as much as to the girls in the room: “She does not marry a King this day. So we have dealt with the Druid’s rhymes and riddles: ‘The maid does not go to bed, and one day Ulaid’s rivers run red’,” he rhymes, as if to mock Cathbad’s prophecies and those who believe in them.  “And besides, Sualtim, Son of Roig, is no King.”

Dechtire also thinks prophecies are nonsense, but she will not let her future be ruled by them. She will not let these men decide to take her from her husband any more than she allowed her mother, her brother, or Cathbad himself, to choose a husband for her.  She has no intention of being imprisoned and kept an old maid her whole life by the Sidhe under the hill, or whatever cursed place this man mocking them is now of a mind to imprison her in.

“Yes, the Son of Roig is not a King,” the hateful man eyes the bride’s white throat, as if he should like to cut it. The flesh there is mesmerizingly smooth and white, unmarked by pox or blight. “Nor was Conchubhar. And yet, what their Druid foretold came to pass. So the only way to be sure is to kill Dechtire.”

Saorise’s eyes go wide, but she does not betray to Dechtire, does not look in her direction.

A lot of the other girls are not as smart.

“Why play druid’s games at all?” Dechtire finds herself speaking, even if under her breath.  The words are out in the air before she realizes she has even opened her mouth.

The gaze of the great golden man with the spear turns to her again. The other Tuatha de Danaan are silent.

 _That was a mistake,_ Dechtire thinks, too late. She hugs a sheepskin to chest, to hide the state of her undress, but she continues: “Have you no mind for the lessons of stories?” she says, her voice loud and ringing clear. “If you take us all away, maybe it will be _your_ actions that will cause all to come to pass. That is usually when prophecies are fulfilled, is it not, when you think on it? By those who take actions to change them?”

“Only by those who believe in them,” the Longhand bores his spearing gaze clear through her.

“Or by those who ignore such warnings, other stories say,” the big red-headed muscled man says. “All I know is, dead women do not have babies, no matter what becomes of their husbands in future. I will not be the fool from the story who was told what must be done, but still he did something other. I have no wish to see this son of her get, the promised hero who will save her house and race. Not I, not ever!”

There follows, a great long silence. The eyes of the maidens of Ulaid go back and forth between the two great men, the flaming one burning with hate, and the golden one, so cold he burns their eyes; there is frost in his stance.

“Are you not a man from the tribe of Danu?” the Sidhe called Longhand finally warns in a quiet voice that is more sinister for its lack of volume. “We are a people who know the cost of wishes.”

“I wish her dead, Lugh,” the red man assures the golden one, “as do your brothers.”

“Let _them_ speak then.”

It seems his own men find him as frightful as the maidens do. None of them will speak against him.

But the red one insists. “Put it to a vote then, and you will see I have the right of it.”

“Your enemies are down the hall and you want to have a vote?” The Longhand laughs darkly, but all the same, he motions to one of his men for a mead cup to be brought forward.

A man with white-blonde shining curls comes forward bearing a cup, and as the Longhand takes it, he dashes its contents to the floor. “They are, all of them, worth more alive than dead,” the frightful golden one says aloud in Gaelic. “Hostages can be ransomed for the return of our lands and your sisters,” he assures the women in the hall. “Dead girls buy us nothing but blood and enemies,” he looks hard at his men.

“Well that’s the fly in the mead cup, for you,” a bright-haired one with a frightful sword laughs hotly.

No one else laughs.

The Longhand then takes from the floor several pieces of straw that he finds. He gives one straw to each man of his raiding party. He makes a show of putting his straw whole into the cup.

 Then he hands the pewter goblet off to the red man....The red man who wants them to kill Dechtire. The red man makes a show of splitting his straw in half, and putting only the half-piece of straw into the cup.

 _They are going to break straws over the decision to murder me!’_ Dechtire realizes in mute horror.

The cup is passed around. Not every man makes an open show of his straw-casting. Only one man, it seems, will not have a say. He is silver-haired, with a long face, and eyes like moon-stones, filled with the light of a hundred-thousand unshed tears.

To him, they pass the cup, and bid him count out the short and the long straws.

He does. With a grave face he comes forwards with two fists of straw. He opens both fists but not so that Dechtire can see their contents to count, and then clutches them close, and then he holds up the short-straw for all to see.

 _No!_ Dechtire falls back on her sheepskin, and looks wildly for Saorise, the brave older girl in the blue bride’s dress.

 _No,_ Saorise mouths fiercely to Dechtire, out from behind the turned backs of the Sidhe raiding party.  _Say nothing, Princess._

The Longhand quickly hides his true face.

It irks him that his men did not make known to him their true desires before, but it was he that put it to the counting of the cup. It is he that must now drink the draft of poison they would have him sup.

Saorise silences any who would call her out, or give up the true Dechtire for her sake: “I _want_ to die a Princess. _Let me_ wear the bride’s blue before I die.”

The Longhand wonders to himself at the girl’s strange speech.

Saorise all but smiles. Her eyes shine brightly as she meets Dechtire’s eyes in thanks and in blessing; then she seeks out the evil eyes of Lugh the Longhand with barely a shake in her white scarred hand; she almost leans herself against his wide, solid chest as she looks up wantonly into those cold, cruel eyes for her death. Then she says: “Well, Sidhe. Have you the power to grant wishes or not?”

Those are her last words.

In one swift movement Lugh the Longhand takes a knife from a sheath from somewhere on his person, pulls Saorise’s fair blonde head back by her braid, then the great man runs the knife swiftly across her fine throat, as if he were killing a mere calf or a lamb.

One would think the girls would scream, but most are so frightened they cannot move. Others are wracked with sobs and cannot breathe for shock of it.

For Dechtire, it all seems so surreal that she cannot take her eyes away from it.

The wound is gaping; it makes a small wretched sucking sound.

Where once there was the smooth white arch of flesh, there is now carved a second, horrible red mouth that bulges, and drains, and spills.

The Longhand then holds Red-Spear’s daughter still a while, to the shock of the room, until the life is gone from her eyes, the blood all done the front of that blue dress, the blue of it now as black as midnight. Then, what is Life is gone in a gurgle.

“It is done.” The Longhand swallows.  

 _For all the great words there were before_ , Dechtire finds herself thinking, _death comes not as it is in stories. There is nothing grand in dying, not even for the brave_. _It is undignified...awful, in a quiet, unseemly final way._

And then the man of the Tuatha de Danaan presses the girl’s wide eyes closed, lets her slip away from him slowly, so she is at her knees, and then he lays her down on the bridal cloak; he carries her respectfully to one of the beds as if he were a groom carrying his beloved over the threshold and not a murderer.

Now, it as if she were sleeping...if not for all the blood.

“She looks fair in blue,” he says in Gaelic to no one and everyone.

At that, Dechtire shivers.

 _The girl was never fair_ , he knows. _But she was brave_. So it seems the right thing to say. And, _at least she died painlessly_ he thinks.

“She looks fair, _dead_ ,” the big, muscled one derides the Longhand’s small kindness. The man seeks to put a hand on the Longhand’s shoulder, and then speaks assurances to him in their language. _To be safe it had to be done. To make sure the prophecy can never be fulfilled, that more of your peoples’ blood is not spilt, it had to be done._

 _Prophecies be damned!_ the Longhand shoves his man away violently. _You are all fools!_

And he wipes clean his knife blade on the hem of a murdered girl’s dress.

Dechtire’s ears are ringing. _This cannot be happening_ , she thinks. Her rationale mind accords it to be a dream. _I should wake up,_ Dechtire reasons. _Mayhaps I should not get married today._

Dechtire puts a hand to her mouth, as much to feel it as to try to scream or talk, but finds she cannot make a sound. Then, just as suddenly, she finds herself carried to the side of Cheese-face but she cannot remember how she was moved. Whether by her own feet or another's hand, mentally Dechtire rails, _I do not know! Not all is right with me. I am not okay._

She would not have gone to this place if all were well with her. Not with a murderer standing over her.

 _A dream then,_ Dechtire decides.

But at poor Saorise’s side, Dechtire feels the blood.

It is warm. And the hand of the other girl is clay-cold.

 _So this is not the moth or mead_ , Dechtire stills and straightens. _This is death._ Dechtire remembers then the mayfly from her dream. _Well, at least that is like it is in the stories,_ she thinks. _In the tale, the hero always hears a prophecy, but never does it make sense until it is too late for him to change anything._

Dechtire dumbly sits, fingering the fabric of her wedding clothes _. I should have worn these garments, not her. This death was meant for me._

The women with their senses now send Dechtire hushed eyes, telling her not to reveal who she is. Outside the music of the festivities can be heard, where Dechtire’s brother's men and her husband are celebrating unawares.

Dechtire regards the women in the room. _We are all of us unarmed, outmatched, and most of us not even properly dressed_ , she thinks. Lying horribly cold despite the sunshine, the frightened women sob and weep.

But Lugh the Longhand has a solution for that, it seems.

"You like it?" he asks cruelly, noting how Dechtire gravely (mindlessly) fingers the folds of a dead girl's cloak. _That is not natural_ , he reckons, regarding the elderberry-stained nails clutching the fabric, and petting the strings of fine tassels. "Want it?"

And it is not a question.

Saorise’s murderer pulls the fine cloak roughly out from under Saorise’s hapless body. He holds it up for all to see. "Look! There now, fine as day, and hardly even a drop of blood to it, and what is there-" and he drapes it lightly over the body of the one Gaelic girl who had warned his men against trying to change prophecies, "I am certain you will find a way to wash it out, and pretend it was always yours."

Other women shake, for they all know how close their princess is now to death.

But Dechtire almost prefers it be this way, and she rises slowly, proudly. As she does so the folds of the fabric fall around her, and the blood stains remind her now, of what people she is from, and what strength she should have.  _I am a daughter of the Red Branch. I am a daughter of the Red Branch,_ Dechtire chides herself as she stands.

But still, in that last second, Dechtire finds her strength is not enough to meet the horrible gaze of the man who is dressing her. Instead, she tugs the cloak closed at the neck, and fixes her eyes upon his horrible red spear, and the length of his blade. Those are things whose lengths and purpose she understands.

"Go on. Keep it," he dares, mocking. "You will need it to keep warm where we are going."

And then he turns from Dechtire to command the rest of the women: "Take one more breath of the air in these halls, for it may be the last you ever see of them, depending on the conduct of your relations. You will come with me, and if you behave, I guarantee your lives, either to ransom or to servitude." Lugh the Longhand, the chief of these murderers, scornfully parades his victory over a room full of scared and half-naked girls. "Put on your clothes!” He thunders. “Choose your warmest and your finest!-" He then directs a thawless smile to the curvy little curly-haired girl with hawthorne flowers bound up so artfully in her plaits. _Those won’t protect you from me_ , he is thinking. "-For you shall be the finest parade of hostages Eire has ever seen!"

 


	4. Still in Progress

Bitterly Dechtire searches the room for Saorise’s gown. When she does spy it, her hand shakes to pick it up from the floor...for it is yellow gown. 

 _I wanted to wear yellow today_ , Dechtire shivers, as she remembers the warnings from almost every other story about the Fair Folk: 

_'Be careful what you wish for’._

The dress is of a simple linen, and the cast of the yellow dye is poor, but Dechtire is determined that no woman could be more proud of her dress than she is, bloodstains and all.

The Longhand himself binds her hands, as if he does not trust her, and his hands are as cool as his heart is evidently cold. He then takes a sprig of hawthorn from her hair to mock their superstitions. He spins it between his red fingers before her eyes, but Dechtire does not allow herself to look up, and so Saorise’s killer moves on.

Having already drawn too much attention to herself Dechtire keeps her face carefully blank as the bound Ulaid women pass under Dannan swords and spears coming out from the women’s parlour.

In morbid pageantry they leave behind them the circle of wattled and earthen-lined great houses under the threat of death and bodily harm.

Bobbing down to the minor trench like a happy little hunting party, and up towards the paling fence, and gate, Dechtire counts the length of the shadows and the height of the sun, and knows there to be two hours yet, before men and women will start to file into the great hall for her wedding feast.

She holds sorrow on the tip of her tongue, and bids that great pain be swallowed down her throat.  Dechtire feels she should choke on it, that her sorrow should escape with a strangled cry, or that her heart should burst. She feels like falling down as she goes out the gate. Yet she holds herself up, swallows her pain, buries it in the pit of her stomach, and walks on.

Dechtire is dressed as a brave woman of Ulaid, and as the sister of the King and an unlucky bride besides, and a mummer’s dance she can dance yet, if she cannot walk as herself plain.

They pass the second lesser trench, and then the greater trench, and behind them the mound of Emain Macha rises.

To the east of them is the ceremonial and ancient hill where the kings of Ulaid are crowned, and before them is the brilliance of the green fields of Emain Macha in warm sunshine, dotted with fine brown grazing groups of cattle.

None of this is a balm to the hearts of the maidens of Ulaid, for, to the right of them, for they stand on the greater incline of the three ancient earthen works that make Emain Macha, they see the brightly-coloured crowd dotting the plain towards the lake of Loughnashade. The girls hear the cheers of their kin as if they could go out to them again.

But the Longhand and four and ten other Sidhe raiders, now wrapped in some poached disguise of purely Gaelic brat, léine, truis, crios, and dealg, with bronze helmets on their heads to hide the bright locks of their hair, stand between the fifty maidens of Ulaid and their brothers, fathers, uncles, heroes…and between one woman and the man who is newly her husband.

The Sidhe raiders drag the girls North-East.

 _No one will miss us while there is still sun and horses_ , Dechtire resigns herself. Only when the parade of the bride to the feast was to be maintained, would any take note of the queer quiet in the women’s parlour.

 _Even when they begin to miss us, and send for us, they will delay, out of politeness,_ Dechtire knows. Brides are often late for their weddings, hair and dresses and so forth, the men will grumble at first. And then someone will suggest they they wait for ‘women are known to be flighty, nervous things on their wedding nights’. _And then Sualtim-_ Dechtire puts a hand quietly to her mouth in despair _–when he is good and mad, and most certainly drunk because of that, and doubting whether or not I have changed my mind due to his low status or something as wretchedly awful as that, someone will finally check and notice that we are gone._

Lugh the Longhand seems to know this. He has accounted for it… as Dechtire had planned for, prayed for, and wished for her wedding day.

He is out in front, too tall for the léine and truis he is wearing, and as if he can summon her thoughts, the leader of this Danaan-Sidhe fianna turns back to survey his grand parade of hostages, and for the third time in the hour, his eyes meet Dechtire’s.

She looks away, determined to guard herself against him.

_Who knows what powers these men have?_

For four and ten minutes or so they trudge down the grassy slope, hauling up their wedding finery as best they are able to with the hands bound before them. Thistles and brambles catch and scratch occasionally, but the day remains sorely, bitterly fine.

To the bottom of the sloped embankment of grass and flowers they come to a boggy hollow where there remains a holy place, older than Emain Macha, or the Milesians there in Eire.

It is but an even-sided votive pool where superstitious women like Dechtire came to throw in offerings to the water spirits, bits of beads or a bracelet or two, but druids before Cathbad’s time made blood and body sacrifices in this place when food was scarce. To ask the earth to be fair and merciful with the Sons of Mil stags of seven tines were cut, and then their heads thrown into this pit, and warriors, silly as young girls gilding the water, are still known to slaughter their best dogs for a wish.

Here the Sidhe men cast off their disguises, and speak in their faerie tongue.  They motion for the women to be quiet and sit a moment.

Sit they do, reclining their fair white bodies on the soft green grass like a flock of nervous, colourful birds.

 _Grass,_ Dechtire words mutely in vague resentment, _that one of us shall never again see or feel or smell._

Dechtire sees, and smells, and feels too much.

Many of the girls are heaving, like Dechtire’s friend Brid, wracked with massive sobs; others quietly weep, and some sit stony-faced, for grief is a visitor that takes some souls by surprise.

When the men motion for them to be up and moving again, every other girl there in the chain of hostages they carried away with them does feign to stumble. Doing so, she fetches from the ground a wildflower or some seeds of grass as she walks.

Braving their Sidhe-captors the girls sprinkle that still, deep spring water with what pretty petals they can so shortly gather, and make their wishes, all.

Dechtire angrily dares more. In her head she silently rails, _I will be damned if I will let any of these murderers profit from my body or person!_

She wedges off her rings and her bracelets of intricate bronze, and she spits them all in with a plunk.

 _If I were a man!_ Dechtire thinks adamantly to herself, straining to reach the dealg with her teeth, head pressed hard against the left side of her collarbone, and neck muscles straining, _my brooch would be fastened to my right shoulder, and I should get it!_

This does draw some attention but If Dechtire could have gone naked in dignity, she would have cast off her fine leine gown as well, but as well as Dechtire’s teeth can bite open a clasp or pry off a ring, her hands are rather painfully bound, and her mouth cannot reckon with the fastening on the dealg brooch, nor reach her breast where it lays hot against her flesh.

This effort and straining, one of the Sidhe notices, him a fair young one with straight hair.

 _If I were a man,_ Dechtire’s eyes become daggers to him, and she takes her sweet time as he makes his way dangerously towards her, _I would know how to move to defend myself, and I would be armed._

The Danaan bemusedly nudges her along with the tip of his spear, and Dechtire then goes along with the rest as she is made to.

She prays to the spirit or goddess of that pool she leaves behind on point-of-spear, that her name be protected from them, that she may revenge the Longhand and the Red One for the death of the girl she is supposed to be now, and that her brother and the Red Branch do rescue them somehow. And most fervently she wishes:

_Please let Sualtim know in his heart I would not leave him today but for what has befallen us now._

As she is pulled wanly along, it occurs to the Princess that, as impossible as it is for Sualtim or any other to know the reason behind their absence, there is no way even the boldest warrior could have planned to kidnap fifty of the highest ranking noblewomen of Ulaid. This was only luck on the side of the raiding party. The isolation of the girls to the women’s parlour was not something a man could plan for or expect. By all rights, Dechtire should have been drinking still on her bench, watching the chariots go round.

Thus Dechtire regards Saorise’s killer, and wonders at his original aim.

Of course, Dechtire logically accounts, there are conditions which would have led the fianna of the Longhand to be so bold. A raid of any sort, and the Sidhe would not even be the first enemies thought to account for it, Dechtire supposes.

She supposes thus because Eire at this time is hardly united under the High King, and with no effective central authority, is divided into local and provincial kingdoms and chiefdoms often at war with another. Conchubhar Mac Nessa is a united force in Ulaid, but he can certainly count on a number of his enemies who might try to raid into his territory.

 _Although they usually take livestock, and not women,_ Dechtire owns, accounting when, and even if her brother will seek to blame a non-traditional enemy for the sudden absence of the girls before the Danaan murderers dispatch their ransom notices.

 _Not that my brother will allow any of his warriors to pay his sister’s killers._ Dechtire sees Saorise in the bloody blue gown again and shudders. _Not that Conchubhar will even know they meant to kill me, unless they brag about it in a message somehow._

The princess continues to consider the usual enemies. _We will blame_ _Olnegmacht_ _first._

Olnegmacht was a realm in which the young ruler of Ulaid had few allies, and many enemies.

Also alliances in Muman were always shifting between Ulaid and Olnegmacht. The grip of Conchubhar Mac Nessa was not solid there, and would not be so for years, and so for all that her brother cannot know, Dechtire despairs.

Her wrists burn as she is dragged along at a harsher pace. The Danaans grip their spears, their pale eyes flashing dangerously about, and their lean and violent figures tense. They all but fly over the green hills as the sun sinks; hills that the Longhand and his brigands seem to know like the palm of their hands.

Yet they encounter not even the solitary cowherd so telling of the domain of Milesian aristocracies there in Eire.

The raiding party is relieved; all able-bodied men and women are ensconced in Emain Macha for the festivities of their ill-fated princess.

Outside of Emain Macha and into the wilds where there is no grazing and so, not much sway of any chieftain or landowning warrior, the light begins to fade in quality, and the raiding party of ten are met by another score to the dismay the proud young women of Ulaid.

Now the girls have no real chance of doing anything much besides oblige and weep against such strength, unarmed and bound as they are.

 _But give us but a weapon and a chance,_ Dechtire believes yet.

 

(This work is still in progress, please forgive. I thought I'd post something anyways. I really learn and get encouraged from comments so if you think of anything please let me know you like it or how I could improve. Thank you!!!!)


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